I just tried the Avernum 4 demo yesterday, and while I liked most of what I saw, some things confused me.
I'm used to playing Avernum with the keyboard, pretty much all the time, only using the mouse sometimes (such as when training), but it now seems that a lot of the shortcuts have been removed. Also, you can't wait in combat anymore?
Ok, first, why is t for talking removed? And l for looking (at signs etc)? And why must I click to select a target with the mouse instead of getting a-b-c displayed over the enemies heads? Is it for aestetical purposes, so that newcomers to the series won't find it ugly, or something?
Secondly, waiting. Imho, it is incredibly important in a turnbased game such as avernum since it can be tactically useful. Was it removed to make combat more accessible to new players?
I tried searching for these things on the forum but didn't find any threads discussing it.
The mouse thingie mostly bothers me because I want to avoid using it as much as possible, since it can lead to pain/injury.
The waiting thing just surprised me - why would such a necessary feature for interesting turn based combat be removed?
Besides these small issues, A4 was fun, even though I didn't play for very long.